The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs—all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.

Although we specialize in maps of fictional realms, as commonly used in both novels and games (both tabletop and role-playing), many Guild members are also proficient in historical and contemporary maps. Likewise, we specialize in computer-assisted cartography (such as with GIMP, Adobe apps, Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni, etc.), although many members here also have interest in maps drafted by hand.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ. You will have to register before you can post or view full size images in the forums.

Dangit, Jim, I'm an Artist, Not a Geographer

Hello, everyone! I'm in the process of making a map for a story I'm writing, and I find myself in a bit of a pickle regarding the geography and climate. The main nation the story follows is an isolated kingdom trapped within a cage of impassable mountain ranges. The mountains are ridiculously huge - Olympus Mons would be on the smaller end of average - and they're stalked by big gribbly monsters with no compunctions about eating you. Here are my rather scruffy plans, or at least what I have so far. The final will be much nicer than this, I promise!

The grey areas are mountains, white is water, and yellow indicates man-made stuff.

Here are my notes; I really hope you can read my handwriting. I won't be offended if you ask for translations.

You Are Here - there are more continents than this, but they won't show up in the story so they don't matter.

The Cage is made up of a very small tectonic plate that's in the process of being crushed by two bigger ones.

What I'd like to know is, how would being completely mountain-locked affect the climate and weather both inside the 'cage' and outside? Any other comments or critique on what I've got so far would also be very welcome. Suggestions for what could be in that empty third of the continent are much appreciated too.

offhand, with that latitude and those very high mountains... you're looking at:

weather: Dry. Sunny. dry. Cold. Oh, and dry.

clouds tend to rain on the windward side of the mountains - so since it's completely surrounded by high mountains, and the trade winds would still impact the mountains, you're looking at not a lot of moisture from the oceans getting in. You'll get some... but not a lot.

Thanks Shcyzm! I figured it would be dry, but didn't quite extrapolate that to sunny as well. There would be plenty of fresh water coming up from the mountains, though, and the area's probably volcanic, so would the combination of plenty of rivers and fertile soil be able to sustain agriculture, even with very little rainfall?

Thanks Shcyzm! I figured it would be dry, but didn't quite extrapolate that to sunny as well. There would be plenty of fresh water coming up from the mountains, though, and the area's probably volcanic, so would the combination of plenty of rivers and fertile soil be able to sustain agriculture, even with very little rainfall?

so, you know the old adage about water flowing down hill? if all the water is falling on the outside of the ring, the rivers (which are made due to rain fall) wouldn't be particularly large.. and wouldn't provide much. Also, since it's completely surrounded, the water doesn't have many places to go - so you might get a lake or bog in the middle - without serious outflow or rainfall though, it'd be a rather nasty, salty kind of place. Fraught with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions (those crushing tectonic plates do the trick).

given the scale, you might get some limited water cycle going on northeastern inner side of the ring of mountains - maybe enough to support some agriculture. but not a lot. to give you an idea of the kind problems that arise when dealing with high mountains and precipitation, check out this wikipedia article on eastern washington state. Now imagine that no where in your great basin of mountains does it rain more than 7 inches per year....

In any case, what I'm getting at is that areas completely surrounded by mountains are extremely arid.

I'm with Schyzm... and pretty sure it wouldn't be livable; depending on the height of the mountains... (check out this RW example: Google Maps for one of the driest places on earth). So, that leaves you with... MAGIC! Or something tapping deep into the earth for natural springs, etc. it would have to be something that intervenes with the natural order of things if you want water there.

An alternative to "LOL MAGIC!" is some kind of great engineering feat to make the area livable and bring water to it. Either some (fairly) recent thing or perhaps something of ANCIENT CONSTRUCTION that all have come to rely on (a bit of a cliche I suppose but it could make for a good plot point and any cliche can work if done well enough).